This course provides students with the skills necessary to lead the traditional prayers of the High Holidays liturgy. Students will explore the musical modes of Nusach HaTefillah that are chanted throughout these holidays, and apply musical motifs to the traditional liturgy. Basic Hebrew grammar will be reviewed, and the structure of this liturgy will be studied. Melodies will be introduced for the most common piyyutim (religious poetry), and the MiSinai melodies of the Ashkenazic tradition will be utilized for specific prayers. Requires fluent Hebrew reading, and the ability to translate with the help of a dictionary. Cantorial students may audit only; will not count for graduate credit for masters students in the Cantorial Program.

This course is designed to serve as an introduction to Hebrew language study and to ensure that students with some prior Hebrew study experience begin Modern Hebrew I at comparable levels. The Mekhina introduces the Hebrew alphabet and vowels, as well as verbs and syntax sufficient for conducting simple daily conversation. Students progress at their own pace, submit oral and written homework, and take online quizzes. Weekly real-time class discussions are conducted by the instructor with small groups of students at comparable levels. The Mekhina is based on the seven introductory units of Ivrit Min Hahatchala (Hebrew From Scratch), the textbook used by Hebrew College’s campus-based and online Hebrew Language programs. Prerequisite: No prior knowledge of Hebrew is required.

Working within a chronological framework, this course will trace the creative transformation of Judaism in the medieval period and the profound challenges posed by modernity. Students will have the opportunity to critically engage with primary sources. Major events and personalities of these two historical periods will be considered.

This course is a survey of the diversity and development of Judaism in the ancient world, covering some of the events and phenomena that shaped ancient Judaism: the impact of Hellenism, the Maccabean revolt and the Roman conquest. Some course time is devoted to the first century of the Common Era-the important period that saw both the birth of Christianity and the destruction of the ancient Jewish state, which in turn gave way to the beginnings of rabbinic civilization.

The greatest Jewish thinkers, like the great thinkers of other religious traditions, distinguished themselves by their ability to reexamine and reinterpret received ideas and texts in profound and far-reaching ways. For medieval and modern Jews, this feature of religious life was a means of rendering ancient traditions meaningful to societies and cultural contexts far removed from their biblical and rabbinic origins. All three of these philosophers were deeply influenced by the intellectual traditions prevailing in their own countries as they developed approaches to Judaism and Jewish life consistent with these contexts. Through careful reading of selections from Maimonides’ “Guide of the Perplexed”, Spinoza’s “Theologico-Political Treatise” and Mendelssohn’s “Jerusalem”, this course will examine the ways in which these outstanding Jews read and interpreted classical Jewish texts.